RIBA announces the winner of the 2021 Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship

A Milanese architecture student has been named as this year’s RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship recipient, the institute announced this week.

Weronika Zdziarska won for a project titled ‘Don’t Stay Out Alone: addressing women’s perception of safety and freedom in cities by design,’ a study of how groups in five different South American cities have intervened amidst the recent tragic uptick in violence that has plagued women in large urban areas across the globe. She is currently enrolled at the Politecnico di Milano. 

Zdziarska’s project will attempt to “demonstrate the relationships between gender inequality and design,” in the hopes of creating more gender equity in the design and urban planning process. A £7,000 grant award goes along with the announcement. 

“The Jury was unanimous in its selection of Weronika Zdziarska’s submission as the winner. Her methodology was impressive, and her project was beautifully presented. Her decision to explore issues of gender in the public spaces of just Latin America demonstrated a sophistication in her early research which differentiated her work from that of her worthy fellow applicants,” Norman Foster said in a statement. 

Previous winners of the scholarship have included works that focus on a diverse range of topics related to life in cities. The full announcement of this year’s edition can be found here.